


Belonging

by starlight_and_seafire



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 11:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15459930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_and_seafire/pseuds/starlight_and_seafire
Summary: After Rey learns the truth of her family, she finds that home, and her family, are a lot nearer than she thinks.





	Belonging

_They were filthy junk traders; sold you off for drinking money._

_No, please come back!_

_They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert._

_Nooo!_

She slides down the wall and wipes at her face, the coarse fabric of her arm band scratching roughly at her skin. Even through her clothes, she can feel the duracrete wall cold against her back, as everything is this far underground on the ice planet. She doesn’t much notice it though, except for the brief moment it pulls her out of her dark and rapidly spiraling thoughts.

A series of short beeps sounds from outside and suddenly the room fills with light as the door slides open. The little round droid and the person next to it are back lit, faces and bodies encased in shadow, and her eyes try to rapidly adjust to the change. Even without being able to make out the details however, she knows it’s Poe and BB-8.

She turns her face away, raising her hand to wipe away the damp streaks of tear and snot that have accumulated on her face. She knows she must look a mess, and the thought only makes her cry harder, a groan catching in her throat.

She hears Poe, his voice low and soft, ask BB-8 for some privacy to talk to her. The little droid emits a few worried beeps, uncertainty in its movement as it rolls back and forth for a moment, before finally rolling away.

_They were filthy junk traders; sold you off for drinking money._

She wants him to go away too, leave her to lick her wounds in peace.

_No, please come back!_

She wants him to stay, to enter the room, maybe hold her and tell her it will all be okay.

She doesn’t know what she wants, and the tears continue to burn at her eyes despite her attempts to blink them away.

On Jakku, her retreat was her small AT-AT walker. It was cramped, the space tight, only a few belongings she called her own, a flower, a doll, another knick-knack or two to fill her space, to make it – her – feel a little less empty. The small storage closet she sits in reminds her of it, a bit colder, much darker, but the space made her feel a little less vulnerable while she was enclosed within it.

She never had to share her space on Jakku, and she was unsure how she was supposed to share her shelter with Poe, now that he had slowly walked inside, his steps tentative, the door closing behind him with a small whoosh.

He stood a few feet away from her, and she wasn’t sure what exactly was showing on her face, besides the obvious trail of tears. She never really had needed to, much less had practice in concealing her emotions. Whatever it was though, it caused him to walk over and kneel in front of her, close, but still with an arms length of space between them.

“Hey, sunshine. You sure move fast,” he said softly, reaching out his hand but dropping it when she kept her arms wrapped around her knees. “Saw you run out of your meeting with Leia, you seemed upset. Been looking up and down three different hallways to see where you might have gone. BeeBee heard you in here. You wanna tell me what’s going on, sweetheart?”

He’s rubbing one of his arms with the hand he held out to her. She thinks maybe she should have reached her hand out to him when he offered. Grasp onto it, let him hold it, maybe even let him hold her. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before, not when they’ve been “dating” or “seeing each other” or whatever phrase Rose found best to use in conversation.

There were apparently a lot of them. But Jakku didn’t really allow her the opportunity to learn and use many of these words.

But when she had found herself wrapped up in his arms before, it was different. Sometimes it was sweet, Poe swinging her up and around in a hug that made her giggle. Sometimes they jostled or wrestled playfully with each other to get at a particular tool for repairs or at some particularly delightful treat from the mess hall line. Sometimes she found herself comforting him, as he was dragged out of another nightmare, of his time with Kylo Ren or of the bombing run during the evacuation from D’Qar or the escape to Crait. And sometimes it was passionate, fervent, his arms pulling her close to his chest, hands skimming up and down her sides as his lips dragged a line down her throat.

But not once had she exposed herself so fully as to let someone else see her vulnerability.

That could mean disaster, even death, where she came from.

But now, she was faced with this man, who had searched for her when she ran, clearly upset, not to find some advantage, some potentially useful tool or object to steal from her when she was at her weakest but – to comfort her?

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it though. I get it. I just wanna make sure you’re okay, I don’t want to see you crying. Not that it’s wrong to cry or be upset! It’s just that I wanna see you happy, that’s all,” he says, trailing off and biting his lip, seemingly unsure of what to say next. His hand goes up to run through his hair, causing the ends to grow a bit frizzy. “I can leave if you want – if you want to be alone. Or I can stay. Whatever you want.”

Her eyes skim over his face. He’s worried about her, his brow furrowing with his concern.

He wouldn’t hurt her, she thinks, no matter how vulnerable she is. The thought hits her with a sudden and clear certainty, and she breaths in deep, trying to catch her breath before speaking.

“Leia knew my parents,” she says, a hiccup catching her in throat as the words force themselves out. She watches Poe’s eyes widen, and he drops from his kneeling position onto his knees, moving slightly closer. His hands fall to rest on his thighs, his fingers twitching, as if they want to reach out for her again.

“Actually, Leia,” she breaths in deep, “Leia is my godmother.”

“Holy kriff,” he says, and she’s worried his eyes might just literally fall out of his head with how wide they’ve gotten. “What? Who?”

“She met my father when they were in the Senate together. My father had represented a little inner rim planet, and they became good friends while working on some relief mission. He wasn’t really involved with the Rebellion, though he passed them some information, bits and pieces when he got it. When the Empire caught wind of this, he and my mother went on the run.”

She pauses her story to wipe a hand over her face, wondering at how the tears just keep coming and coming. If she was on Jakku, she would never do this, never waste that much water, if she even had enough to make tears. Her breath comes out strangled around the knot in her throat as she continued her story.

“Apparently some of the information had implicated one of the top officials in the Empire, and the grudge lingered long after the war ended. Bounty hunters were on the lookout for them for years and years.  And then she became pregnant with me. Leia helped hide them, passed on money and resources when she could. She even met them once more, soon after they had me. That’s when they asked her to be my godmother. And she agreed,” she swallows hard. “She said that she felt it, that the force called her to do that. She said she realized that they needed to keep hidden, to keep safe.”

She had been looking at her hands where they’d been clasped around her knees as she was telling her story. Slowly, she glances up to meet Poe’s eyes and sees a sheen of unshed tears in them.

“What happened then?”

“A few years later, she received a distress call from them. They were on a ship, but when someone arrived to check it out, no one was there.”

She leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes. “I think that’s when I was left on Jakku. She doesn’t know how or why that happened. The empty ship wasn’t even close to Jakku. But that’s all she knows.”

She can practically feel him vibrate with his unasked questions. What happened on that ship? Was it her parents that left her on Jakku? Did someone else leave her on that planet? Most importantly …

She doesn’t make him ask it. Knows that the respect he has for Leia stretches for leaps and bounds, that he wouldn’t even want to ask whether Leia had searched for her or not, knowing how horribly overwhelmed the New Republic was at the time, how thinly everyone was stretched in trying to put it back together. Anyone else might have just ignored that little empty ship and it’s three missing occupants.

“Leia says she searched for them, for me. Put out some feelers with her contacts, tried to figure out where that ship was coming from, where it was going.” She sighs. “But it’s a big galaxy. She couldn’t have known. There wasn’t a clue.”

She glances away, the feeling he’s showing in his eyes just a little too much for her at the moment. But she reaches out a hand, her fingers outstretched, and feels his hand clasp hers tightly. She pulls him forward, until he’s sitting next to her against the wall, their hands still together and his thumb rubbing against her knuckles.

He leans towards her, his shoulder almost touching hers, and she moves to close the space. He wraps his arm around her shoulder and tightens it just enough until she’s snug against his side.

She sniffles, turning her face until it’s resting against his chest. “I just wish I knew why, though. I don’t know why I was left there, or who left me there, why they didn’t come back.” She sighs. “And Leia’s told me what she knows about them, my parents,” and her voice catches on those words, so unused to the concept of knowing who they might be, “but she says there may be more. That she didn’t really know a lot about them herself, but she’s trying to figure out more about where they came from. Who their family was, maybe if I have family out there.”

_These are your first steps._

There’s so much for her to wonder about now. That maybe she has family out there, people who are missing her, people who are her kin, her own flesh and blood. Poe hums, the sound of it vibrating against her ear where it’s pressed against his chest. “That’s a lot to take in, sweetheart.”

She feels comforted, but at the same time she feels a spike of something harsher cut through her chest.

“And you know what? I’m angry too!”

Poe’s hand stills where it’s been rubbing up and down her arm, but it remains just below her shoulder, a grounding presence. She doesn’t move away from it, but her voice rises in her anger.

“He used it to manipulate me. Pretended he saw who my family was, what they did, but he was just using it to his own advantage.  He knew it was my weakness, and he just lied about it. Kriff, I’m an idiot.”

She didn’t have to tell Poe who he was, could feel him tense up under her as she mentions him. “No, sweetheart, you’re not. You are one of the strongest, smartest people I know. Wanting a family is nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn’t make you weak. He’s the one who should be ashamed of what he’s done.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I thought I could turn him.”

Poe’s hand resumes rubbing her arm. “Somehow, despite what you’ve been through, you have more compassion than most people. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I admire that about you.”

She leans back in and burrows her head a little more into his side, seeking more of the comfort he’s providing. “It’s just so strange, you know. To think that I might have family out there. There might be people who are mine, you know?” She trails off. “Maybe there’s someone out there.”

Poe leans over, presses his lips against the side of her head. “No matter what happens, you should know that you’ve already got people. They might not be blood, but they can still be family you know?” After a second, she feels him tense up slightly as if he realizes that maybe he’s just said a little more than he intended to. Maybe he doesn’t want her to know it yet, maybe he thinks it’s too soon, too intense, that maybe it’ll scare her off, but in the months she’s been with Poe, he’s been feeling more and more like someone who will be a permanent part of her life. Like family. “I mean, you’ve got Finn, of course, he’ll throw down for you. And then there’s Leia and Rose. And Chewie, well, he’d clearly rip off someone’s arms for you.”

She laughs, a watery sound, recalling telling him that very story while sharing a bottle of Coreillian ale with him, early on in their relationship.

He continues, his voice firm, but gentle. “No matter what, no matter how this turns out, you’ve got a place to go, you know? If you want it. You, and Finn, and Rose, and whoever else wants it. I think you’ll like it. Some of the rebels settled there after the war, built homes and lives. My dad lives out there still. He’s got a ranch there. I can bring you there one day to visit, if you want. But no matter what, you’ve got people, and a place.”

She leans back, just far enough to look into his face, and his eyes meet hers, soft and fond. “And you. Right? I’ve got you?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. You’ve got me.”

She leans back into his chest and wraps her arms around his torso, squeezing lightly. She can feel the tightness in her chest ease for now.

“You’ve got me, too.”


End file.
